You can also safely check with Vicious mockery. The spell can target any creature, but only damages the target if it can hear, which “inanimate” things cannot.

On the other hand, Dissonant Whispers causes the target to hear (rather than hearing being a precondition as it is with Vicious Mockery) and with this you can kill petrified creatures, thus ensuring no spell casters return them to flesh-and-blood, without damaging the statue.

You’re not dead when you’re petrified, either, which can lead to some pretty interesting exploits, rules-as-written.

Petrified creatures count as creatures, not objects, so rules-as-written you can determine if a statue is a petrified creature by trying to target it with a spell that requires a creature for a target.

With the cantrip Poison Spray, you can check for petrified creatures without using spell slots or risking damaging the creature, since it would be immune to poison while petrified.

They had trouble with simultaneous releases when they put out 4e, there were some troublesome proofreading/quality issues. So with 5e, they put out the pieces one at a time, allowing each title to have its own turn to be the urgent, top priority.

I started running 5e before the release of the Monster Manual 5e, using the smattering of monsters in the back of the PH. It was limiting, but fun in its way.

I gave my 8 players a Condorcet poll for which game I should run next. Their main gripe was a Condorcet poll sounded complicated (it wasn’t).

Kevin Crawford’s “Without Number” games swept the podium (Stars, Cities, Worlds) knocking D&D to fourth place.

The real big table might be a factor. Combat is just so much faster.

Oh, I don’t let the fickle dice tell me when to give a hint or twenty. Nat 1’s come aplenty when you gate-keep crucial information on a die roll.

Only thing that worked was jettisoning the players who torpedoed campaigns for whatever reason.

Nah. Basic was way deadlier.

You can be the first type, and some players will still see you as the second.

Like, they attack the king’s castle for no reason and are upset the guards don’t lie down and die, then refuse to surrender when things are entirely hopeless and they’re offered mercy. Such a mean DM!

This is just another way to out yourself, gamer.

Had me until your last sentence.

It’s always going to be mixed, to some degree. The challenge is making it work anyway.

Yes, and Noon to 3:00 PM can blow a hole in your free time in a way that something running 7:00-10:00 PM doesn’t.

I put about 6-10 hours a week into RPG’s (DM’ing/playing/prepping) but would never want to play every Saturday afternoon. That would totally crimp my other interests.

Just want to point out Gygax had 2 sons, who are quite different people. I believe you are referring to Ernie Gygax.

Luke Gygax, by all accounts I’ve heard, is a great fellow.

Gygax also elevated Jean Wells in the company before the subsequent management basically made her a secretary. Wells had a decent working relationship with Gygax, which you can see if you read in Dragon magazine “Sage Advice” column from the mid 80’s. Gygax should have listened to Wells more often than he did, but he did try to empower her to make the game more friendly to women.

Still, his legacy towards women in gaming is mixed at best. In the 80’s, TSR games which Gygax was less involved in tended to do better with women, notably Star Frontiers, but also “Basic D&D” which did not include rules making it disadvantageous to play a female character, unlike Gygax’s Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, which capped female strength below male strength for each race. And I think telling a new D&D player their character would be a lousy fighter is pretty rough.

Yes, there was a pattern in Gygax’s creations of evil female power that went beyond the dragon example. Most notably drow were the only evil elves, and the only matriarchal (he would have said “female dominated”) ones. This pattern wasn’t his invention — it’s as old as Snow White, Cinderella, and the rest — but even in his own time, others (for example, Tom Moldvay) created more inclusive games.

It’s even better when the DM for you!

This can happen with new players who are native English speakers too, as D&D has a fair deal of vocabulary not everyone knows. Words like charisma and melee really got popularized by D&D.

Deep cut here: When I was a kid (ages past) and first heard friends talk about D&D, I thought there was a lens to keep you on the border. And without it, you might go straight Into The Unknown.

If your character concept is “complete” before choosing your class, consider being a human. Other choices carry along more “baggage” that may distract from what you’re shooting for.

Other players can be like “What kind of elf would…?” etc., but they don’t do that for humans.

Are you quoting something with those ellipses?

If “5.2” were a marketing decision, then it would probably be getting used in their marketing materials. But there you see stuff like “One D&D.”

Incrementing the second number here is in line with general “geek numbering system” convention. It doesn’t seem to me like marketing barged into the production room and insisted on a more “marketable” version number — not that that has never happened, but marketing would most likely have wanted “5.5” not the inscrutable “5.2.”

Shades of the original (only much better art). I like it.

I’m not sure it’s an exact match, but SRD 5.1 was published around the same time as the PH accrued the “This printing includes corrections to the first printing” message in the front matter.

They both contain the corrections from the previously-published errata.

So if you will, if your PH has that message, and it probably does, you’ve probably been playing 5.1 for a while now.

I ran 2 tables in 4E, but when 5E came out they never wanted to go back.

It all came down to keeping track of all the powers, nobody liked that. They also hoarded their encounter and daily powers, rarely using them (and hoarding encounter powers doesn’t make a lot of sense).

I was a little disappointed because the one table was about to hit their paragon paths, which seemed like fun, and the players seemed excited for. It’s a concept I wouldn’t mind seeing in a new game – it was a little like choosing a subclass at 10th level.

SRD 5.1 was released 8 years ago though, long before TCE. And since Tasha’s rules are all considered optional, that book didn’t really revise the rules, just expand on them.